Basically, a silver halide color light-sensitive material is processed in the two treatments, namely, a color developing treatment and a desilvering treatment. The desilvering treatment is ordinarily comprised of a bleaching step and a fixing or fixing-bleaching step in which a fixing capability can be displayed. Besides the above, a rinsing step, a stabilizing step and so forth may also be added as additional processing steps.
As for oxidizing agent for bleaching image-forming silver, organic acid metal complex salts such as aminopolycarboxylic acid metal salts and so forth have been used, because they have few polution problems and are able to satisfy the demands for reclamation of waste solutions. However, the processing solutions containing the organic acid metal complex salts have the following defects, because the oxidizing function thereof is relatingly lower. Namely, one of the defects is that the bleaching rate, i.e., the oxidizing rate, of image-forming silver is low and another defect is that it takes a long time to carry out a bleaching step particularly with a high-speed silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material mainly comprising a silver bromide or silver iodobromide emulsion or with a color paper, color negative film or color reversal film for directly photographing, each highly containing silver.
In the case that a lot of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials are successively processed with an automatic processor or the like, it is required to provide a means for keeping the components of a processing solution constant within a certain range of the concentration so as to prevent a bleaching solution from the malfunction caused by the variations of the component concentration. There have, accordingly, been the proposals for replenishing a concentrated replenisher in a small amount, that is so-called a highly concentrated and low replenishing system, and for adding a reclaimant into an over-flow solution so that the over-flow solution may serve again as a replenisher.
Concerning bleaching solutions, in particular, a method for reclaiming a bleaching solution has been put to practical use, in which an organic acid ferrous complex salt produced by bleaching image-forming silver is so reconstituted by oxidizing it as to be an organic acid ferric complex salt and a reclaimant is so added thereto as to compensate a shortage of components, so that the resulted solution may serve as a replenisher.
In recent years, however, at so-called compact type photofinishing laboratories which are on the rise and also known as mini-labs, there are serious needs for simplifying processing steps and saving the floor space for installing processors. Therefore, it is not desirable to provide a reclaiming system which particularly requires troublesome labor and control as well as an extra floor space for reclamation.
From the above-mentioned points, the foregoing highly concentrated and low replenishing system could be preferred. In this system, however, if an amount of a bleaching solution to be replenished should extremely be reduced, a problem may be raised by increasing the concentration of the components of a color developer carried into a bleaching solution, so that a bleaching reaction has to be inhibited and, more seriously, another problem may be raised by the increase in yellow stains. The deterioration of image preservability will be emphasized, in the recent low replenishing system for color developer.